Ukraine’s Security Service blames “Russian gang” for terror assaults in Kiev

Ukraine’s Security Service (SSU) has disseminated a statement saying a terrorist group of four men – “members of a pro-Russian NGO” who allegedly plotted a terror assault in Kiev have been detained.

“The organizer of the terrorist group, born in Sakhalin, Russia, together with his accomplices, residents of Kiev and the region planned terror assaults in Kiev… The terrorists were detained near an apartment block on Mayorova Street in the Obolonsky district of Kiev, where an Anti-Terrorist Operation volunteer center is located. The plotters actively resisted and managed to blow up a RGD-5 grenade outside the center. In response, security officers used service guns wounding one of the terrorists in the leg,” the SSU says in the statement.

Meantime, one can see nothing like “active resistance by the terrorists” or any episodes of the operation in the video footage, just nighttime video recorded by a street surveillance camera.  The explosion near the entrance of a one-story building resembles a pyrotechnical explosive rather than grenade.  It is noteworthy that the men that “managed to blow up RGD-5” are not seen in the video footage either.

Further in the video, the detainees are laying on the asphalt and one of then admits that the “tab” on the asphalt belongs to him. No one of the detainees introduces himself, nothing is said about “the resident of Sakhalin.” As to the SSU reports about “devices that could be applied to commit terrorist assaults in Kiev were confiscated from the criminals,” one can see only an outdated wood handle revolver, safety work gloves and a knife.  “Thus, a real threat to the life and health of the Kiev citizens was prevented,” the Ukrainian law-enforcers say. They say the organizer of the terrorist group was to leave for “the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea” immediately after the assault.

EADaily reported earlier the unknown threw a grenade at the office of the Right Sector, the national extremist organization banned in Russia, on September 3 in Kiev. Later, Ukrainian media refuted the reports saying was not the Right Sector’s Office, but “the Anti-Terrorist Operation volunteer center.”

It is noteworthy that the reports on the explosion that hurt no one sparked ironical comments among Facebook users in Ukraine. Some supposed that the Russian security services could be behind the provocation against the Right Sector. Others joked saying “SSU will blame Putin personally for planting a bomb in the office of the Right Sector on his way to the economic forum in Vladivostok.”